Rick Perry's Out-in-the-Open Bigotry

By Steve Clemons

I became the 599,464th person to dislike Rick Perry's anti-gay ad titled "Strong" on YouTube. Only 17,811 people have clicked they like it.
This is the Rick Perry zinger:

You don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

Bigotry out loud. Perry probably can't pull off a win in the presidential primary at this point. He was the big anti-Romney hope of many GOP candidates, until he began speaking in debates.

My worry is that he'll rank up in the stratosphere for a cabinet level job if Romney or Newt managed to beat President Obama. Perry's bigotry will dog him for sure -- but so too will GOP strategist Mike Murphy's delicious tweet:

Listening to Perry try to a put a complicated policy sentence together is like watching a chimp play with a locked suitcase...